Free Work

Recently I go a text from a friend telling me that the PA position I had recommended them for was not paying. That really made me mad as I was under the impression that it was and that having to be informed of it this way was rather insulting. Now, the director of this film is a friend of mine and clearly all of this is being done in the indie filmmaking world. Having been essentially raised in that culture during my time at NYU and my continued experience in seeing it after graduation (it's kind of a side-effect of living on the east coast), I am no stranger to the challenges of trying to create something with no money and can only imagine that trying to make a feature length film is 10x more difficult in that regard.

Shooting a film is hard -- especially an indie film -- it is boasts all the problems of launching a start-up with significantly less flexibility in procedure and NO immediately marketable product. Despite all that, however, it is NOT ok to advertise a PA position that will ultimately be unpaid -- and let me explain why.

The film and television industry is flooded with naive kids ripe for taking advantage of -- all just trying to get into the industry somehow. -- I used to be one of them, so I know first hand how quickly you become jaded once something legitimate comes along (and rightfully so). Generally, it's not until then that you come to realize that at the end of the day, asking a PA to work for free helps no one but yourself. Typically, asking someone to work for free comes with something for them. It is only a partially legitimate argument that you can use whatever work you did on the film for your reel and that working on this project will be a great benefit for you once the film goes somewhere. It is a shitty reason at best, but at the very least, a reason. If we look at everything realistically, the chances that your indie film will go anywhere are fairly slim. Alongside that, as a PA, the very simple question arises of "how does this in any way benefit me?". If you are making a film with the intention of profiting from it, which you are (don't give me any bullshit about artistic integrity) unless you're a moron who likes to waste money (in which case, you can afford to pay your PA's) or a nonprofit organization (in which case you should either have a legit budget or be working with a skeleton crew), it is not fair to be asking someone to sacrifice weeks to months of their time for nothing when you clearly aren't willing to do the same.

As I stated previously, your film has little chance of going anywhere and in the unlikely case that it does, no one is gonna look at the film and say "hey, that's a really great film! I think I'll look through the credits and see who the PA's are so I can hire them, because they clearly did an amazing job on this film!" Credits do NOTHING for PA's except provide minimal bragging rights in the off chance your film gets anywhere -- and even then, "yea, I was a whole crew's unpaid bitch on that production" doesn't really sound impressive.

Now, having said that, with an indie film I understand that there are always budgetary concerns, and I'm not asking that PA's be paid the full $200 a day rate (as is industry standard), nor do I expect you to pay them more than your DP or Sound mixer -- especially if they are bringing their own gear -- but I do expect them to be paid something -- anything to at least let them pay their bills (at least pay them the equivalent of minimum wage).

Comments not only welcomed, but encouraged.

Lemmings

Apparently this is what I broke my foot for back in June.

The Perils of the Film Industry

I managed to hurt myself on Friday, effectively putting myself out of commission for doing anything this past weekend... and, well, today. As you may be able to see from the -- very possibly too graphic picture to the left, I hurt my foot.

I was doing PA work (as is sometimes necessary when you go back to working pro bono as a favor to the person that kinda started you off on getting paid for the company that you previously did unpaid slave labor for for 2 years) on a commercial-ish gig for a company called "Black Watch Productions," a company I've worked with before (They're actually cool peoples). The details of this commercial, however, will remain hush hush since I signed an NDA and don't feel like being sued for leaking info over the net (in this public a forum none the less).

One of my goals is to steer myself away from doing PA work and get more assistant editing or associate producing gigs, but again, working pro bono doesn't pay the bills, even if you do get to pick up skills that will get you to your goal.

To sum up the events that left my right foot looking like it was suffering from a recent boxing match with Manny Pacquniao (and that was only minutes after this all happened)-- a 15-20 pound stage fell on my foot -- full force. It hurt a lot -- and I STILL had to drive home several hours later. Over the course of the next few hours I iced it as my entire foot swelled up to twice it's size and I stubbornly gimped around the sound stage cleaning and... well, doing my PA duties as best I could -- though frequented with breaks to re-ice and elevate.

And so I spend the entirety of my weekend chair or bed bound with my leg resting on a pillow as I wrapped ice around it. I think the swelling's gone down considerably and luckily nothing seemed broken (I can walk on it pretty ok now). There's more to this story, but I'm afraid I might end up violating the terms of the NDA if I talk more about it. Though, it is worth noting that we were shooting in a cool sound stage (i'm sure it used to be a warehouse/factory) in Greenpoint called "Cinema World Studios" -- and on a funnier/lighter note -- some time during the final day of filming (I was PA-ing on Thurs. and Friday, so on Friday --) some unexpected auditions started taking place that shouldn't have really since I believe the entire place was booked by the shoot I was on. The production manager for Black Watch Productions said it was weird because some of the girls that was auditioning for whatever last minute audition just came up popped into the wardrobe area our production was set up in and just started putting on bikinis and more or less stripping in front of everyone to do so (not our production's) so everyone was like "wtf?" and talked to the people that ran the place, who moved them upstairs.

When I was told about this I jokingly asked "are they auditioning for a porn?" To which the production manager is like "no... they can't be." -- Later we found out they were auditioning for something called (and I REALLY hope I wasn't imagining this) "Old Man Gone Wild" and that was a nice "told you" moment. But yea, it kinda wasn't cool that they kept eating our craft services (for those of you not in the film/tv industry -- that's our food/snacks -- as hopefully you could tell from the use of the word "eating,".)


All of that aside, I look at my job(s) and I really do think, you need to enjoy what you're doing if you want to survive in this industry.

Constantly I come across low-level/entry level people in this industry that don't seem to care, which is just kind of ridiculous to me because though there's this allure of fame and wealth, not giving a shit about your work isn't going to get you there -- hell, giving a shit about your work is no guarantee. Honestly, it is a very difficult thing to make a lot of money in this industry, the people you hear about making hand over fist in huge deals is maybe the top 1% of the people in this field. There are so many better ways to make lots of money, so for all the people in it because you think it's easy money -- you're in for a pretty big surprise.